With episodes of series leaking left and right and movies being discussed everywhere, the internet has become a minefield full of spoilers. You can outsmart them with these tools that block spoilers.
How to block online spoilers
If you’ve seen a thrilling plot twist in your favorite series or movie, chances are you’ll want to discuss it with others online. It is therefore not surprising that Twitter is currently filling itself with people who have seen the latest Star Wars movie. However, if you haven’t had time to check it out yourself, you have to work hard to avoid all the photos, videos and other spoilers. Fortunately, there are a number of tools to do this.
1. Google Chrome: Unspoiler is your best friend
If you’re on your Mac or Windows PC, this Google Chrome extension is your best friend when it comes to avoiding spoilers. Unspoiler does exactly what its name suggests: it highlights and hides all articles and texts that may contain spoilers. Once you have installed the extension, enter the name of the movie or series you want to hide.
Then the extension warns with large red bars if there is a suspicious text on a site, including on Facebook and Twitter as long as you have these pages open in Chrome. In addition, you can put websites on a list that can be trusted. Handy if, for example, you know if a website handles spoilers carefully and you can therefore continue to read articles about your favorite series with confidence. Unspoiler is free to download, but only works in Google Chrome.
→ Download Unspoiler from the Chrome Web Store (free)
2. Twitter: this is how you use spoiler filters
Twitter is known as one of the worst social networks when it comes to spoilers. Fortunately, the official app has built in a function for it: ignore words. By specifying the correct hashtags and words, you filter your timeline of all tweets that use these terms. You activate these filters as follows:
- Open the Twitter app;
- Tap your avatar;
- Choose ‘Settings and privacy’;
- Select ‘Content Preferences’;
- Choose ‘Ignored’.
You can then enter all the words and hashtags that you no longer want to see in your timeline. In the case of Game of Thrones, for example, that could be the hashtag #GoT, but also random names like Jon Snow, Westeros, Tyrion and Lannister. In addition to the official Twitter app, you can also apply these filters in Tweetbot and Tweetdeck, both on your iPhone and Mac.
3. Facebook: the handy Social Fixer
To also make Facebook spoiler-free, you have to work a little more extensively. With the Social Fixer service you can filter your entire timeline, which filters out all the words you don’t want to see.
Social Fixer works for Safari, Firefox and Chrome, although the big disadvantage is that it is only available on the Mac. So keep in mind that your iPhone timeline is still potentially full of spoilers.